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taneously with and without; it is a surer path to take read these as textual claims. So too, his solution implies that scripture ought not be taken literally: it doesn't, or can't, mean both kinds of statements about Brahman. What he does not do, however, is explain how we are to decide when scripture is to be taken literally. |
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12. Tr. 623. |
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13. The preceding discussion may be usefully located against the background of Riffaterre's discussion of "subtext:" "[A subtext is] a text within a text. From the viewpoint of the text in which it appears, a subtext is a unit of significance. From the viewpoint of the readers whom it helps to perceive and decode the significance of long narratives, the subtext is a unit of reading that is a hermeneutical model . . . It is not a subplot and must not be confused with a theme, for it has no existence outside the text in which it appears. A subtext is usually strung along the main narrative line in separate successive variants that may overlap with other subtexts. The story it tells and the objects it describes refer symbolically and metalinguistically to the novel as a whole or to some other aspect of its significance." (Riffaterre 1990, p. 131) A subtext points to the truth of a text because it "always constitutes a second reading of what the text surrounding it is about, a poetic or humorous metalanguage of the narrative. The subtext thus actualizes the relationship of referentiality." (Riffaterre 1990, p. 28) The texts which speak of Brahman without qualities serve this function of metanarrative, not as if they constitute a discourse within the discourse, but because their denial of the evident primary discourseBrahman can be spoken of and meditated on in many wayscompel the reader to enter into a different and more complex, temporally sensitive relationship to the rest of the text, questioning it differently and vigorously rereading it against itself. |
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14. "You are that," repeated nine times in Chandogya 6, has a privileged place in the Advaita tradition. Sankara refers to it frequently as a distillation of the meaning of the upanisads, and in later Advaita, inside and outside the UMS Text, it becomes a key organizing tool in many Advaita expositions. For example, the third chapter of the Naiskarmyasiddhi of Suresvara, a disciple of Sankara, is an exposition of the meaning of tat tvam asi, including its necessary scriptural contextualization, the meanings of tat and tvam, and the proper linguistic tools by which the statement can be parsed properly. Similarly, Dharmaraja Adhvarindra's Advaita Paribhasa a popular and concise presentation of Advaita epistemology, metaphysics and soteriology, structures its 7th chapter, on the content of Advaita, around an exposition of tat tvam asi. The decisive transformation of the disciple's consciousness in the Vivekacudamani is achieved through reflection upon an analysis of these same words. |
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